EA Starts Gamedev Program

mrseigen writes "CNN is reporting that EA has opened a game program at USC. It is the first official game development education. Yeah, right."

Comments

What? Is my Digipen degree chopped liver?

[Dancin_Santa]

Or Braunshweiger, as Oscar Mayer calls it?

Here's the real question (ready?):

Should universities be designed for vocational training?

Discuss.

First?

[Bedevere]

Cornell has had The Game Design Initiative available for a while, although there is no actual major in game design.

chair endowed by himself

[KillerCow]

Bing Gordon, Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Electronic Arts (Research), was named the first holder of the Electronic Arts endowed faculty chair at the USC School of Cinema-Television, according to a statement from the company, the biggest video game publisher.

I love it. The guy endows himself as a faculty chair. Forever putting to rest the notion that University curriculum can't be bought.

Academic integrity @ USC => zero.

USC job posting: Tech writer wanted...

[mobiux]

Verbatim from USC gaming computer website.

Gateway computers
Pentium IV - Intel 3.0 GHz RAM
1 GB Video
Gforce4 5900
256MB of onboard RAM
USB 2.0, firewire support, sound blaster compatible
DVD drive

Is any self-respecting geek going to go to a place that can't talk about hardware correctly?
But then again, if you had self respect, the EA attachment would probably stop you cold.

Yeah, it already exists in many forms.

[irokitt]

My local community college has had a very good game development program for 3 years, diversified now into three possible certificates (those who want an Associates need to complete a handful of extra courses, giving them both a Computer Science degree and a Game Programming or Development certificate). The bent of the program is to give students (who already have a basis in computer programming or graphics design) a beginning introduction to the art, then give them time to work on a demo/portfolio. It's possible to jump into the industry to some degree after completing the program, but far better to go to a specialized university first (DigiPen being a common goal, though not always realized). Game programming is not a vacation by any stretch of the imagination, so jumping in with a two year degree would certainly scare me. So this is hardly the first place where this sort of thing is taught, in that it exists at the two year as well as the four year level.

Re:What? Is my Digipen degree chopped liver?

[DarkMantle]

I kinda like the way we got it setup here in Canada. If you want an education based in theory, understanding of key concepts and the like then go to University. If you want to learn how to do things, get a basic understanding of the "whys" then go to college. Generally the University people understand more, but can do less.

(NOTE: This is an honest true story)
Me and a friend of mine in college made money doing the "practical" assignments for friends from university. They understood the principles of software engineering, but however, could not write a line of code.

Oddly enough, they're the ones that would run the a software project, but wouldn't know how the developers actually made it work.